Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

This is a a book review of Zeev Maoz's Defending The Holy Land: A Critical Analysis Of Israel's Security & Foreign Policy(University of Michigan Press: 2006).The reviewer, Ellen Cantarow, writes: "Anyone seeking the background behind Israel's demonizing of Hamas; its destruction of Gaza; its slide into today's fascism (my word, not Maoz's) should read this book. According to its author Israel has been a "Sparta state" from its inception, its national psyche veering between arrogance and paranoia. Shaped by the belief that all Arabs and their states would destroy Israel if they could, the Jewish state's policies have been rooted from the start in Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" doctrine. Adopted by Jabotinsky's arch-rival Ben Gurion, this doctrine has translated throughout Israel's history as repeated military blows "to convince the Arabs of the futility and illogic of their dreams. Over time, the Arabs will come to accept the Jewish state and to make peace with it" (9)."The book, the reviewer says "brings a crushing weight of historical and analytical detail to bear on all arenas of Israel's security and foreign policy".

Not surprisingly, the book was ignored by mainstream media when it came out. Cantarow conjectures that Maoz's "unimpeachable credentials" have made the book most threatening:"He headed the Masters program of the Israeli Defense Force's National Defense College; he also directed the Graduate School of Government Policy and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Of five major wars he analyzes here, he fought in three: the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, and the 1982 Lebanon War. In the early 1990s he briefly advised Yitzhak Rabin on strategic affairs. His thirty-year ambition to write this book was driven by his frustration with "the persistent failure of the policy community to learn from Israel's mistakes . . . " (viii)."

In 1997 Hamas offered Israel a 30-year truce. Jordan's King Hussein delivered the offer: Israel's response was to send Mossad agents to Jordan where they tried to kill Hamas leader Khaled Meshal by dropping poison in his ear. The incident (described by former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy in his book, Man in the Shadows), not only deeply embarrassed the King, it also failed to kill Meshal. (Other peace bids were made; all were rejected, though none, perhaps, as dramatically as this.)

Hamas has also honored both short and long ceasefires, not the least of which took place during the six months preceding Israel's recent devastation of Gaza. A January 2009 Huffington Post article by Nancy Kanwisher, Johannes Haushofer, & Anat Biletzki shows that in any "conflict pause" between 2000 and 2008 ("conflict pause" means a cessation of hostile actions on both sides) Israel most often killed first, shattering the peace. The longer the "conflict-pause," the greater Israel's propensity to break it with violence.

The 1997 assassination attempt illustrates what Zeev Maoz, in his landmark work, Defending the Holy Land, calls Israel's "over my dead body" approach to peace. One form of Israeli ceasefire violation has been targeted assassinations, which Maoz says became policy -- a specific "tactic intended to ignite escalation" -- in the al-Aqsa Intifada. (He himself cites "four separate occasions" on which "Israel violated an implicit cease-fire that the Palestinians imposed upon themselves by assassinations that caused escalation" [287].)

Anyone seeking the background behind Israel's demonizing of Hamas; its destruction of Gaza; its slide into today's fascism (my word, not Maoz's) should read this book. According to its author Israel has been a "Sparta state" from its inception, its national psyche veering between arrogance and paranoia. Shaped by the belief that all Arabs and their states would destroy Israel if they could, the Jewish state's policies have been rooted from the start in Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" doctrine. Adopted by Jabotinsky's arch-rival Ben Gurion, this doctrine has translated throughout Israel's history as repeated military blows "to convince the Arabs of the futility and illogic of their dreams. Over time, the Arabs will come to accept the Jewish state and to make peace with it" (9).

The book brings a crushing weight of historical and analytical detail to bear on all arenas of Israel's security and foreign policy. Readers will find blow-by-blow analyses (including details of military decisions, arms used, tactics chosen, advances, retreats, etc.) of all of Israel's wars from Sinai in the mid-1950s through Lebanon in 1982 (the book ends in 2004). Here, too, is a compendium of its "lesser" conflicts from 1949 through the first part of the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Maoz gives careful attention to Israel's secretive nuclear policy and its impact on the region. An illuminating exploration of Israel's intervention into the affairs of neighboring states includes Israel's covert operations in the Sudan, where it supported the Black Sudanese south against the Arab north from 1965-75; the West Bank, where it tried to create "village leagues" -- these were manned by thugs loathed by the general population -- to supplant the PLO. (When that didn't work, it supported Muslim groups that morphed into Hamas.) A section on the "causes and implications of the mismanagement of National security & foreign policy" includes a detailed discussion of how Israel's military came to dominate its civil society (including its court system).

This book was ignored (by The New York Times among others) when it appeared. My guess is that it wasn't the book's bulk (at over 700 pages including end notes and references this is a huge volume) that caused editors to ignore it. Certainly it wasn't its plain-spoken but occasionally "poli-sci" style: such books are routinely reviewed in the Times and The New York Review of Books. I suspect that the book was simply too damning of policies slavishly underwritten by the US, and unquestioningly accepted by US intellectuals -- including, say, the editors of the Times. Length and unwieldiness might have been an excuse; but the real reason probably lies in today's unhappy atmosphere of censorship (both by the "self" and by the guardians of public thought in this arena).

I also suspect that a strike against Maoz is his unimpeachable credentials. He's enough of an "establishment man" to be dangerous -- hence, better ignored. He headed the Masters program of the Israeli Defense Force's National Defense College; he also directed the Graduate School of Government Policy and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Of five major wars he analyzes here, he fought in three: the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, and the 1982 Lebanon War. In the early 1990s he briefly advised Yitzhak Rabin on strategic affairs. His thirty-year ambition to write this book was driven by his frustration with "the persistent failure of the policy community to learn from Israel's mistakes . . . " (viii).

Israel committed one of its worst mistakes in 1971. That February, President Anwar Sadat announced to Egypt's People's Assembly a possible "interim agreement" with Israel. Within days this became a full-blown peace offer brokered by the UN's Gunnar Jarring in trilateral negotiations with Israel, Egypt and the US. Egypt's foreign minister wrote Jarring that Egypt would "enter into a peace agreement with Israel containing all the . . . obligations as provided in Security Council Resolution 242 . . . once Israel withdrew from the Sinai" (412; emphasis mine). The offer, comments Maoz, "could not be overstated . . . At the end of the road was what the Israelis had been, presumably, praying for over the past twenty-three years: a full-fledged peace treaty . . . It implied a formal acceptance of and peace with a Jewish state in the Middle East by the strongest and most important Arab state" (412).

If Israel had said yes to Sadat in 1971, the Palestinians might well have been quiet (subsequent leaked Israeli intelligence has revealed that Israel was considering letting the old families in the occupied territories run their affairs as they had under the Ottoman Empire). Egypt would have been removed as Israel's greatest Arab threat; Egyptian compliance with the treaty would have been a touchstone for future negotiations with other Arab states.

Before 1967 Israel would have accepted Sadat "with both hands," says Maoz. "In 1971, however, the price tag for this deal appeared excessively high . . ." (412). In short, Israel's greed trumped its desire for peace. It wanted to hold onto what it had conquered in the Sinai in 1967; in specific it wanted to build a huge city on the site of a tiny settlement called Yamit (Israel was forced to evacuate that in 1982).

The choice was fateful. The Yom Kippur War, which largely owed to Israel's rejection, cost the lives of three thousand Israeli soldiers; a "staggering" loss of equipment; $10 billion in overall damages. (Arab losses, of course, were far higher.) On at least two occasions (October 9 and 23), Israel armed its nuclear warheads, bringing the region to the brink of nuclear war (164). (Maoz thinks it's reasonable "to suppose that [Israel] had two to three dozen bombs and a dozen or so nuclear warheads on its Jericho missiles" (165). He also feels that "nuclear deterrence did not do what it was supposed to do" (315). Soviet intelligence must surely have passed knowledge of Israel's nuclear doings to Egypt, but neither Egypt nor Syria was deterred from pressing forward. (The chapter on Israel's nuclear policy greatly expands the idea of its futility and its sparking of a regional arms race.) After the war Israel's defense spending soared from 15% to 25% of GDP, "the largest in the world atthat time" (165). Beyond sheer expense in blood and money, in January, 1974, Israel agreed "to a far worse deal" with Egypt (417).*

Was the choice of expansion over peace worth it? Maoz thinks not. The Yom Kippur War did improve Israel's relations with the US; at the same time it increased Israel's military dependence on the Americans. The Yom Kippur War further isolated Israel elsewhere in the world and, in Maoz's view, "marked the growing legitimacy accorded by the international community to the PLO" (167). Israel's security establishment (IDF intelligence) continued dominating its foreign-policy decisions. Among other things this produced Israel's ties with "pariah states such as South Africa . . . " (168).

Maoz use the specific terms "expansion" and "annexationist" only in reference to later events: "Once religious ideology became a major drive in the settlement policy, an unspoken alliance was formed between annexationist elements in the Labor Party and the Likud Party, on the one hand, and national-religious groups such as Gush Emunim, on the other" (489). But Israel's expansionist ambitions are very clear in Maoz's account of Sadat's 1971 offer. Elsewhere, the author describes Israel's territorial fixation as a far earlier motive:

"Even before 1948 . . . Zionist leaders strongly believed that the outcome of any political settlement in Palestine would be determined by the demographic distribution of the ethnic groups residing in it . . . Settlements form a human and physical fait accompli" (17).

In regard to the Sinai war,

"The Israeli leadership had been itching for war since the early 1950s...A large number of people in the military and political elite believed...that the outcome of the 1948 war had not been decisive . . . in providing Israel with defensible borders . . . Both military and political leaders...were actively searching for an appropriate pretext to occupy the West Bank" (74).

In regard to Israel's relations with Syria: "Whenever requested to define the military requirements of a possible agreement with Syria, the IDF opted for territorial control rather than for security arrangements . . . " (403).

The theme I've extrapolated from the book (that Israel's expansionism has historically trumped peace) is not Maoz's. But the evidence exists for such a conclusion. A flaw is that there's so much detail, one can easily lose the forest for the trees. But the details do often make for arresting reading.

Readers will be reminded how "traditional" Israel's brutal siege against Gaza was, how rooted in the past its subsequent destruction of the Strip, by reading the chapter, "Unlimited Use of the Limited Use of Force." Here, Maoz goes back sixty years to describe a policy of collective punishment against civilians. From 1949 on, Israel struck villages from which 1948 refugees had "infiltrated" into the Jewish state. Moshe Dayan comments as follows:

"The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral [emphasis mine], but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side (is retaliation.) . . . if we harass the nearby village . . . then the population there comes out against the (infiltrators) . . . and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian government are (driven) to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is (assailed) . . . " (279).

What has changed in 55 years is that Israel's leaders exhibit naked arrogance in committing outlaw acts -- there's no thought of using a phrase like "not justified or moral." Yet the use by Ben Gurion, Dayan, and subsequent leaders of collective punishment inevitably produced today's Israel. So has its long history of provocation. "[D]isproportionate responses to provocations, as well as military initiatives not in response to specific provocations" (232) include:

Moshe Dayan's order to his general staff, October 23, 1955, to overthrow Nasser's regime by "bring[ing] about a decisive confrontation with Egypt in the nearest possible future." "Gradual deterioration" (Dayan's term) would materialize through acts of disproportionate force against Egyptian provocations. If nothing else worked to make Egypt react satisfactorily, Dayan would order "the occupation of the Eilat Straits by the IDF" as "the detonator that will blow up the entire powder keg" (63-65). (Result: Nasser is not overthrown. The Sinai war is a military success, but it does not result in "making the region safer for Israel and the West . . . just the opposite" (79).

Dayan's candid discussion, in a mid-1970s interview, of IDF provocations against Syria, designed to push that country and Egypt towards the 1967 war: "It worked like this: we would send a tractor to plow some place in the demilitarized zone where nothing could be grown, and we knew ahead of time that the Syrians would shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to move deeper (into the DMZ) until the Syrians got mad eventually and fired on it . . . We thought then, and it lasted for a long time, that we can change the armistice lines by a series of military operations that are less than war, that is, to snatch some territory and hold on to it until the enemy would give up on it . . . " (103). (Result: the 1967 War is a victory, but it contains the poison pill of occupation and further conflict. It makes Israel arrogant and stupid enough to ignore all warnings, and be ravaged by the Yom Kippur War.)

Israel's blanket-bombing of southern Lebanese towns and villages in July 1983 caused thousands of Lebanese to flee toward Beirut. "Operation Accountability" was meant to make the population reject Hezbollah: the opposite effect was achieved.

This book should take its place in your library next to, say, those of Israel's "revisionist" historians, Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle and, more recently, Idith Zertal's and Akiva Eldar's Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories (1967-2007) (Nation Books, 2007).

If you're daunted by the book's length, begin with the first chapter, an excellent overview of the whole that includes concise summaries of each subsequent chapter. You may want to jump to the concluding "Findings and Lessons." Then dip at will into the chapters you find most intriguing (each has a convenient closing summary). Keep coming back over time: this is a book one digests over the course of many sittings.

Problems: I find the index sometimes frustrating: look for "Yamit" -- it's missing. Look for "assassinations" or even "targeted assassinations" -- also missing. A substantive flaw: while Maoz at points alludes to the US's influence on Israel's conduct, he doesn't hammer away at it as a theme.

Then there's his belief that Israel's policies of force have been "failures" or "folly." But what if the inevitable escalation of war into war, "limited conflicts" into further conflagrations, were deliberate? As I write this review, Avigdor Lieberman has just become Israel's new Foreign Minister. Gaza lies in ruins. (On the walls of a shelter where twenty-seven members of one family were killed by an air strike, are inscribed Israeli soldiers' sentiments born of sixty years of "Iron Wall" indoctrination: "Make war not peace," "Arabs need to die," and "Arabs 1948-2009." Such genocidal hatred will flourish only more luridly with the incoming government.) In the West Bank including East Jerusalem, settlement expansion goes on apace. Settler and army attacks against Palestinians and international supporters continue unabated. As usual, Obama hasn't said boo, nor has Hillary Clinton (her only remark about the destruction of 1,000 Gazan homes was that it was "unhelpful"). The real lessonof this book may be grim: force works.

* [Note added March 22, 2009] In 1974, following the Yom Kippur War, Israel had to agree to a "much worse deal" than Sadat had offered in 1971. But withdrawal from the Sinai wasn't part of the deal -- that happened only after Camp David (1978-79). Moreover, the burden of blame for Israel's rejection of Sadat's 1971 peace offer falls on the US's Henry Kissinger (then national security adviser), whom Maoz describes as having been in a "turf battle" with Secretary of State William Rogers who did favor the peace plan. Absent Kissinger, Israel might well have followed a different path in 1971 -- and even after. Those who want to follow up on the Kissinger role should also consult Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle from p. 65.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Saying, as Gideon Levy does, that the IDF "ceased" to be the 'most moral army in the world' implies that at some point indeed it was the most moral army. I question that: Since alreadyat the '48 war the Israeli army engaged in massacres; ethnic cleansing, and so on and so forth,exactly when was it a moral army? (And is any army ever a moral one?)

This objection aside, I like this article , and think it's very much worth reading.It tells us what many of us who have been paying attention know - that the atrocities committed in Gaza are nothing new, and that in fact they have not ended when the Israeli army withdrew.Furthermore, the likelihood that the army will conduct a real investigation into the widespread killingof civilians that occurred in Gaza is nill. He concludes: "Change will not come without a major change in mindset. Until we recognize the Palestinians as human beings, just as we are, nothing will change. But then, the occupation would collapse, God forbid. In the meantime, prepare for the next war and the horrific testimonies about the most moral army in the world. "

Gideon Levy: IDF ceased long ago being 'most moral army in the world'March 23, 09

What shock, what consternation. Haaretz revealed grave accounts by officers and soldiers describing the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman was quick to respond that the IDF had no prior or supporting information about the events in question, the defense minister was quick to respond that "the IDF is the most moral army in the world," and the military advocate general said the IDF would investigate.

All these propagandistic and ridiculous responses are meant not only to deceive the public, but also to offer shameless lies. The IDF knew very well what its soldiers did in Gaza. It has long ceased to be the most moral army in the world. Far from it - it will not seriously investigate anything.

The testimonies from the graduates of the Oranim pre-military course were a bolt from the blue - accounts of soldiers butchering a woman and two of her children, shooting and killing an elderly Palestinian woman, how they felt when they murdered in cold blood, how they destroyed property and how there was not even fighting in this war that was not a war.

But this is neither a bolt nor blue skies. Everything has long been known by those who wanted to know, those who, for example, read Amira Hass's dispatches from Gaza in this paper. Everything started long before the assault on Gaza.

The soldiers' transgressions are an inevitable result of the orders given during this brutal operation, and they are the natural continuation of the last nine years, when soldiers killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians, at least half of them innocent civilians, nearly 1,000 of them children and teenagers.

Everything the soldiers described from Gaza, everything, occurred during these blood-soaked years as if they were routine events. It was the context, not the principle, that was different. An army whose armored corps has yet to encounter an enemy tank and whose pilots have yet to face an enemy combat jet in 36 years has been trained to think that the only function of a tank is to crush civilian cars and that a pilot's job is to bomb residential neighborhoods.

To do this without any unnecessary moral qualms we have trained our soldiers to think that the lives and property of Palestinians have no value whatsoever. It is part of a process of dehumanization that has endured for dozens of years, the fruits of the occupation.

"That's what is so nice, as it were, about Gaza: You see a person on a road ... and you can just shoot him." This "nice" thing has been around for 40 years. Another soldier talked about a thirst for blood. This thirst has been with us for years. Ask the family of Yasser Tamaizi, a 35-year-old laborer from Idna who was killed by soldiers while bound, and Mahdi Abu Ayash, a 16-year-old boy from Beit Umar who was found in a vegetative state, another victim of recent days, far from the war in Gaza.

Most of the soldiers who took part in the assault on Gaza are youths with morals. Some of them will volunteer for any mission. They will escort an old woman across the street or rescue earthquake victims. But in Gaza, when faced with the inhuman Palestinians, the package will always be suspicious, the brainwashing will be stupefying and the core principles will change. That is the only way they can kill and engage in wanton destruction without deliberating or wrestling with their consciences, not even telling their friends or girlfriends what they did.

Regarding the statement of one soldier, who said "As much as we talk about the IDF being an army of values, let's just say this is not the situation on the ground, not on the battalion level," the IDF has long ceased to be an army of "values," not on the ground, not in the battalion, not in the senior command. When an army does not investigate thousands of cases of killing over many years, the message to the soldiers is clear, and it comes from the top.

Our Teflon chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, cannot wash his hands of this affair. They are bloody. What the soldiers of the preparatory academy described were war crimes, for which they should be tried. This will not happen, save for the grotesque spectacle of "principled probes" in an army that killed 1,300 people in 25 days and left 100,000 homeless. Military police investigations will not lead to anything.

The IDF is incapable of investigating the crimes of its soldiers and commanders, and it is ridiculous to expect it to do so. These are not instances of "errant fire," but of deliberate fire resulting from an order. These are not "a few bad apples," but rather the spirit of the commander, and this spirit has been bad and corrupt for quite some time.

Change will not come without a major change in mindset. Until we recognize the Palestinians as human beings, just as we are, nothing will change. But then, the occupation would collapse, God forbid. In the meantime, prepare for the next war and the horrific testimonies about the most moral army in the world.

This article in the London Review of Books by John Mearsheimer (of Walt and Mearsheimer, authors of "The Israel Lobby") dissects what happened with the failed Chas Freeman appointment and what it means for the power of AIPAC specifically and "the lobby" generally.

Mearsheimer examines what was new in this round: that while the mainstream media took no notice of the battle until it was over, the pushback in the blogosphere was smart and intense: "a vigorous,well-informed and highly regarded array of bloggers defended Freeman atevery turn and would probably have carried the day had Congress nottipped the scales against them."

This is an important point, but i think it doesn't pick up on the obvious conclusion: bloggers alone, no matter how well-informed, rarely if ever have the power to convince Congress of anything.

For that what is needed is an organized, nimble,strategic, large constituency of people who could successfully counter-act AIPAC. We're not there (yet) but Mearsheimer suggests, by inference, that as space opens up in American discourse to talk about the "special relationship" with Israel, there could be.

Many people in Washington were surprised when the Obama administrationtapped Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, thebody that oversees the production of National Intelligence Estimates:Freeman had a distinguished 30-year career as a diplomat and DefenseDepartment official, but he has publicly criticised Israeli policy andAmerica's special relationship with Israel, saying, for example, in aspeech in 2005, that 'as long as the United States continuesunconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection thatmake the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeatingpolicies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hopethat anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected.'

Words like these are rarely spoken in public in Washington, and anyonewho does use them is almost certain not to get a high-level governmentposition. But Admiral Dennis Blair, the new director of nationalintelligence, greatly admires Freeman: just the sort of person, hethought, to revitalise the intelligence community, which had been verypoliticised in the Bush years.

Predictably alarmed, the Israel lobby launched a smear campaign againstFreeman, hoping that he would either quit or be fired by Obama. Theopening salvo came in a blog posting by Steven Rosen, a former officialof Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, now underindictment for passing secrets to Israel. Freeman's views of the MiddleEast, he said, 'are what you would expect in the Saudi ForeignMinistry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship'.Prominent pro-Israel journalists such as Jonathan Chait and MartinPeretz of the New Republic, and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic,quickly joined the fray and Freeman was hammered in publications thatconsistently defend Israel, such as the National Review, the WallStreet Journal and the Weekly Standard.The real heat, however, came from Congress, where Aipac (whichdescribes itself as 'America's Pro-Israel Lobby') wields enormouspower. All the Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committeecame out against Freeman, as did key Senate Democrats such as JosephLieberman and Charles Schumer. 'I repeatedly urged the White House toreject him,' Schumer said, 'and I am glad they did the right thing.'

It was the same story in the House, where the charge was led by RepublicanMark Kirk and Democrat Steve Israel, who pushed Blair to initiate aformal investigation of Freeman's finances. In the end, the Speaker ofthe House, Nancy Pelosi, declared the Freeman appointment 'beyond thepale'.

Freeman might have survived this onslaught had the White Housestood by him. But Barack Obama's pandering to the Israel lobby duringthe campaign and his silence during the Gaza War show that this is oneopponent he is not willing to challenge. True to form, he remainedsilent and Freeman had little choice but to withdraw.

The lobby has since gone to great lengths to deny its role in Freeman'sresignation. The Aipac spokesman Josh Block said his organisation 'tookno position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it'. TheWashington Post, whose editorial page is run by Fred Hiatt, a manstaunchly committed to the special relationship, ran an editorial whichclaimed that blaming the lobby for Freeman's resignation was somethingdreamed up by 'Mr Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists'.

In fact, there is abundant evidence that Aipac and other hardlinesupporters of Israel were deeply involved in the campaign. Blockadmitted that he had spoken to reporters and bloggers about Freeman andprovided them with information, always on the understanding that hiscomments would not be attributed to him or to Aipac. Jonathan Chait,who denied that Israel was at the root of the controversy beforeFreeman was toppled, wrote afterwards: 'Of course I recognise that theIsrael lobby is powerful and was a key element in the pushback againstFreeman, and that it is not always a force for good.' Daniel Pipes, whoruns the Middle East Forum, where Steven Rosen now works, quickly sentout an email newsletter boasting about Rosen's role in bringing Freemandown.

On 12 March, the day the Washington Post ran its editorial railingagainst anyone who suggested that the Israel lobby had helped toppleFreeman, the paper also published a front-page story describing thecentral role that the lobby had played in the affair. There was also acomment piece by the veteran journalist David Broder, which opened withthe words: 'The Obama administration has just suffered an embarrassingdefeat at the hands of the lobbyists the president vowed to keep intheir place.'

Freeman's critics maintain that his views on Israel were not his onlyproblem. He is said to have especially close – maybe even improper –ties to Saudi Arabia, where he previously served as Americanambassador. The charge hasn't stuck, however, because there is noevidence for it. Israel's supporters also said that he had madeinsensitive remarks about what happened to the Chinese protesters atTiananmen Square, but that charge, which his defenders contest, onlycame up because Freeman's pro-Israel critics were looking for anyargument they could muster to damage his reputation.

Why does the lobby care so much about one appointment to an important,but not top leadership position? Here's one reason: Freeman would havebeen responsible for the production of National Intelligence Estimates.Israel and its American supporters were outraged when the NationalIntelligence Council concluded in November 2007 that Iran was notbuilding nuclear weapons, and they have worked assiduously to underminethat report ever since. The lobby wants to make sure that the nextestimate of Iran's nuclear capabilities reaches the oppositeconclusion, and that would have been much less likely to happen withFreeman in charge. Better to have someone vetted by Aipac running theshow.

An even more important reason for the lobby to drive Freeman out of hisjob is the weakness of the case for America's present policy towardsIsrael, which makes it imperative to silence or marginalise anyone whocriticises the special relationship. If Freeman hadn't been punished,others would see that one could talk critically about Israel and stillhave a successful career in Washington. And once you get an open andfree-wheeling discussion about Israel, the special relationship will bein serious trouble.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Freeman affair was that themainstream media paid it little attention – the New York Times, forexample, did not run a single story dealing with Freeman until the dayafter he stepped down – while a fierce battle over the appointment tookplace in the blogosphere. Freeman's opponents used the internet totheir advantage; that is where Rosen launched the campaign. Butsomething happened there that would never have happened in themainstream media: the lobby faced real opposition. Indeed, a vigorous,well-informed and highly regarded array of bloggers defended Freeman atevery turn and would probably have carried the day had Congress nottipped the scales against them. In short, the internet enabled aserious debate in the United States about an issue involving Israel.

The lobby has never had much trouble keeping the New York Times and theWashington Post in line, but it has few ways to silence critics on theinternet.

When pro-Israel forces clashed with a major political figure in thepast, that person usually backed off. Jimmy Carter, who was smeared bythe lobby after he published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was thefirst prominent American to stand his ground and fight back. The lobbyhas been unable to silence him, and it is not for lack of trying.Freeman is following in Carter's footsteps, but with sharper elbows.

After stepping down, he issued a blistering denunciation of'unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of apolitical faction in a foreign country' whose aim is 'to prevent anyview other than its own from being aired'. 'There is,' he continued, 'aspecial irony in having been accused of improper regard for theopinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearlyintent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.'Freeman's remarkable statement has shot all around the world and beenread by countless individuals. This isn't good for the lobby, whichwould have preferred to kill Freeman's appointment without leaving anyfingerprints. But Freeman will continue to speak out about Israel andthe lobby, and maybe some of his natural allies inside the Beltway willeventually join him. Slowly but steadily, space is being opened up inthe United States to talk honestly about Israel.

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished ServiceProfessor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

My nephew, whom I greatly love, was conscripted not long ago into the IDF after a year of national service, and chose to join a combat unit. To my knowledge, I am the only one in the family who is unhappy about all of that (except the national service part, when he worked with disadvantaged urban youth).

However, this is not my child, but my sister's child. Since I am not the parent, what could I have said? How much could I have interfered?

I sent him an email when he was inducted, saying, basically: "Sometimes after people get in the army, they discover that it is not what they thought it would be and they are troubled when they learn how it really is. If this happens to you, there are resources -- people you can talk to, outside of the army"-- and I gave him some suggestions.... names of organizations he can contact. --Meantime he has finished basic training and is in an officer's course. I wonder what slogan will be on the T shirt someone in his unit will print to mark the end of the course (see below)?

Will I be sorry later that I did not dare to interfere more vocally? I think about what he will almost certainly be required to inflict on others, including noncombatants, including children, unless he opts out somewhere along the way, a choice requiring a very strong resistance to groupthink and to a lifetime of brainwashing, a choice grounded in a profound inner conviction that the IDF is wrong, wrongly deployed, an instrument of a criminal and oppressive national policy, massively transgressing the norms we are supposed to hold dear -- a conviction which I can't see how he can possibly have developed, all of a sudden. And, since we become what we do, I think also about what this behavior of his will be doing to him. When he comes home on leave, surely he will be treated like a good son, a good brother. No one will ask for details of what he has been doing since his last leave. How is he to know he is doing wrong if everyone around him acts like all is well? That vacuum, thatsilence, seems to me to be criminal. That silence makes the families of IDF occupation soldiers into accessories to the murder of noncombatants. Doesn't it?

Today, after reading Uri Blau's "No Virgins, No Terror Attacks" in Haaretz, I sent my nephew another email - pasted below. I try to be gentle with him because I keep reminding myself that this is not a volunteer army. My nephew was conscripted, and if all the brainwashing he has been subjected to, and his misplaced patriotism, made him a willing conscript into an army of occupation, still he was a conscript, nonetheless. That distinction, of course, will have no bearing on his culpability for any war crimes he may commit while in uniform.... Not even the Qassams fired from Gaza at civilian populations in Israel will have a bearing on his culpability for any war crimes he may commit while in uniform...

Dear G.,

I hope you are well and doing OK, hon...

When I saw this article (below), I immediately thought of you. You are the one I worry about these days, for a lot of reasons. What they talk about in this article is one of the reasons...

Try to take care of yourself somehow in the midst of all the insanity.

Below, the first few paragraphs. Read it to the end online.I rest my case.--Deb

-------------------------------

Last update - 22:41 20/03/2009

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009

By Uri Blau

Tags: Israel News, IDF, Gaza

The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants....

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Moshe Yaroni, a pseudonymous blogger (his icon is the pre-State Zionist essayist Ahad Ha'am) who obviously has deep knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and regional history, has written a number of revealing and well-argued analytical essays on current events in the Middle East for the Website Jewcy.com.

Most recently, in a column provocatively titled "Where's the Love?," Yaroni has commented on the public spat between David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, and the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen. Cohen has drawn the ire of Harris and other right-leaning commentators for a series of op-eds about Israel and Iran that challenge the usual positions taken by New York Times editorialists. In February, Cohen wrote in the NY Review of Books that, after the Gaza assault, he had "never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions, so despairing of any peace that might terminate the dominion of the dead in favor of opportunity for the living." Harris took issue with Cohen in a NYRB letter in which he asked what Cohen would have Israel do about Hamas.

As Moshe Yaroni points out in his own response to Harris's question, Israel's decision to wage an enormously destructive campaign in Gaza was not only morally indefensible even by the Israeli military's own standards (this was the conclusion of an IDF report published in Haaretz in mid-February <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064161.html>), but it was a strategic failure from a variety of perspectives, not least because it loosened Hamas's grip on rogue military factions in Gaza that are now firing rockets at Israel once again, and it resulted in the breakdown of regional alliances from which Israel has benefited, including its historically friendly relationship with Turkey. As Yaroni points out, there are other approaches that undeniably would have yielded much greater benefit for Israel (did anyone mention official negotiations?), and even to have done nothing would have been more beneficial and less costly to Israel's security and moral standing, and to Palestinians' lives.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

On March 15th, the LA Times published a pair of op-ed essays by two American Jews with diametrically opposed views of Zionism. Their opposing views are worth reading, in part because they have been given prominent space in a major American newspaper; the discussion needs to be extended, however, beyond the confines of intracommunal debate. More importantly, the wrong topic -- Zionism and anti-Zionism -- is under debate. This ideological argument serves to distract attention from the desperate need for a renewed discussion of human and political rights that must set the agenda for any negotiations toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One of the two interlocutors in the LA Times debate is Judea Pearl, father of the late journalist Daniel Pearl (and president of the memorial foundation that bears his name), and a professor of computer science and statistics at UCLA. Pearl asserts that it is anti-Zionism, rather than anti-Semitism, that "poses a more dangerous threat to lives, historical justice and the prospects of peace in the Middle East." He claims that the perniciousness of anti-Zionism lies in the fact that it "rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation -- a collective bonded by a common history -- and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace." Pearl says nothing about the twenty percent of Israelis who are not Jewish, and one wonders how he reconciles the rights of Jews to self-determination with the rights of Israel's large non-Jewish minority population. His most troubling assertion is that "the anti-Zionist plan to do away with Israel condemns 5 1/2 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon." Any future "anti-Zionist" -- that is, single state -- plan which fails to fully protect the rights of the demographic minority would (and should) be rejected out of hand by Israelis. Pearl's apocalyptic scenario is therefore primarily a rhetorical stick to beat those among the "academic and media elite" whom Pearl, ironically exhibiting the lack of public civility he criticizes in others, prejudiciously characterizes as hatred disguised within the "cloak of political debate."

The other position in the debate is articulated by Ben Ehrenreich, a novelist and freelance journalist, who writes that "The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace." His argument is that Israeli Jews' adherence to political Zionism has underwritten policies practiced by the right and the left of the Israeli political spectrum that are incompatible with democracy. In Ehrenreich's view, neither the Israeli left nor the right can lead the country to peace, because both camps endorse what one might describe as a mystical view of the nation's territorial rights. "The problem is fundamental," writes Ehrenreich. "Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing." While Ehrenreich very accurately describes the essential problem entailed in founding a modern nation-state on ethnoreligious affiliation, this ethical argument alone will never be enough to convince Israeli Jews to abandon their national and territorial claims, because such claims are linked to profound and historically rooted existential fears. One may argue that these fears are grossly exaggerated, but such an argument is merely theoretical. One may also argue that demagogues have frequently whipped up such fears among Israeli Jews in order to justify the expropriation of more Palestinian land; while undoubtedly true (and deeply destructive to any possibility of eventual reconciliation), this does not speak to the persistent difficulty of guaranteeing equity in societies deeply riven by ethnic or religious conflict.

In the end, the debate between Zionists and anti-Zionists is a red herring, in my view, a diversionary tactic that merely postpones crucial negotiations and decisions that could enable an equitable and peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians. The real debate needs to be over how to politically enshrine -- with the necessary help of the international community -- the rights of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews in a future political compact. Unless Israeli Jews can be presented with a plan, whether national or confederational, that guarantees their political freedoms and allows them to live without fear of being politically overwhelmed by shifting demography, then peace, with reparative justice for the Palestinians, will remain elusive. Without such an internationally backed guarantee of rights and security, negotiations can only be experienced as a zero-sum equation in which Israeli Jews have everything to lose. This far more important debate over how to assure the rights of Jews and Palestinians will not happen without the impetus of broad-based popular political activism, the involvement of the key global political players, and sincere compassion for both sides. Until widespread demand mounts for the negotiation of an internationally backed agreement that preserves the mutual rights and political freedoms of Israelis and Palestinians, the stronger party in the conflict will continue to prevail -- at an inexcusable expense to itself, to the weaker group, and to the entire region.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Rose Mishaan was a member of the National Lawyer's Guild delegation to Gaza shortly after the ceasefire. Her devastating report is a must-read. Go to Mondoweiss, which originally posted it, to see pictures as well:

US Eyewitness in Gaza: 'The reality of a very real bloodbath set in...'

By Roxe Mishaan

It took me a month to write this email. In that month, I've been through a whirlwind of emotions, trying to find away to process the things that I saw. I still haven't figured it out.

I went to Gaza with a group of lawyers to investigate violations of international law. We crossed into Gaza through the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah. At first we were fairly convinced we wouldn't get through. We had heard different stories of internationals trying to get through and then getting turned away -- they didn't have the proper credentials, they didn't have a letter from their embassy, etc. It made it all the more anti-climactic when we got through with no problem. just a minor 7-hour detainment at the border, which was really nothing at all. they said we were free to go. so we boarded a bus and drove the half-mile to the Palestinian side of the crossing. when we got there, we went through the world's one and only Palestinian Authority border crossing. we were the only ones there. they stamped all our passports and gave us a hero's welcome -- invited us to sit down for tea and have some desserts. they could not believe an American delegation was there, in Gaza. as faras we learned, we were only the second American delegation to enter Gaza since the offensive -- after a delegation of engineers. We were certainly the first and only delegation of American lawyers. while we were trying to avoid the mandatory Palestinian shmooze time with tea and snacks, waiting for our cabs to arrive to take us to our hotel, we felt a bomb explode. to our unexperienced senses, it felt like it was right under us. i got immediately anxious and decided we need to get out of there. our Palestinian hosts laughed at me kindly and said "don't worry this is normal here". somehow, not that comforting. we got in our two cabs and starting heading from the border to our hotel in Gaza City. the ride from Rafah to Gaza City was about 40 minutes. as soon as we left the border gates, we began to see the bombed out buildings. one of my companions yelled out "holy shit!" and we looked to where she was pointing and saw the giant crater in the building. then my other travel companionturned to her and said "you can't yell 'holy shit' every time you see a bombed out building. we'll all have heart attacks." and she was right. the entire 40-minute drive to Gaza City, our cab driver pointed out the sights around us. he explained what each bombed out building was, who was living there and what had been a big story in the news. all we saw was decimation. one building after another collapsed into rubble.

When we got to our hotel in Gaza City, I was surprised. It was standing -- no bomb craters, no burnt out sections. and it was still in business. we checked in and we had running water and electricity -- both things that i was unsure about before coming to Gaza. that first night we arrived we met with two United Nations representatives: one with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human RIghts and one with the UN Refugee and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza was clearly upset at the recent offensive. A well-spoken man with a strong commitment to human rights and international law, he told us about the UN schools that were hit during the onslaught. He kept saying that the "rule of law means you apply it to everyone equally". He badly wanted to see an end to Israeli impunity. We got a tour of the facility that was shelled during the offensive. We saw the hollowed out warehouse after it was shelled with white phosphorous andeverythinginside was destroyed -- medicines, food, spare automobile parts to keep their vehicles up and running (pictured above). John Ging told us about how the UN had called the Israelis after the first shell and told them not to target the UN compound, that there were gasoline tanks on the property. they received assurances that they would not be targeted. Moments later the Israelis shelled the exact area where the gas tanks were located with white phosphorous. the phosphorous hit the warehouses and UN staff risked their lives to move the gas tanks before the fire reached them, avoiding a massive explosion.

That first night in Gaza was almost surreal. It was so quiet, almost deafening. I was convinced that any moment a missile would come screeching through the air and shatter the night. there was a sense of waiting for something to happen. but nothing did. the night gave way to morning and I awoke in Gaza for the first time in my life.

The things we saw that morning would turn out to be the hardest. We went to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. In the parking lot we saw bombed out, twisted skeletons of ambulances before we were hurried into the building to meet with doctors. Standing in the middle of a care unit, I saw a little boy, about 5 years old, hobble down the hallway, holding his mother's hand. He had a leg injury and looked in pain. The doctors wanted to show us the white phosphorous cases, since we had asked about that. The doctor pointed to two rooms with patients we could talk to. There were two women in the first one. The one closest to the door just stared at us blankly, not saying anything. It turns out she lost her whole family during the assault. A few of us went into the next room. There we found Mohammad lying in bed -- heavily bandaged, missing his left eye. He told us the story of how his whole family was burned to death when two white phosphorous shells hit their family car. He was lucky enoughtohave been knocked out of the car by the first shell. He lay unconscious and burning on the ground, while several neighbors pulled him away. He didn't see his family die -- both parents, his brother, and his sister. they were in their car driving to a relative's house to get away from the shelling in their neighborhood. it was during what was supposed to be a 3-hour ceasefire. Their car only made it 70 meters. He and his brother were both in college. His brother was going to graduate this year. As he told us that, a fellow delegate, Linda, who had been translating, suddenly burst into tears. Mohammad grabbed her hand and told her it was ok. Strange how people ended up comforting us. The doctor came in and told us they were changing a child's dressing if we wanted to come see. We walked into a room to see a baby -- about 2 years old -- lying on a table. She suddenly sat up and I saw that one whole side of her face and head were severely burnt. I had assumed she was hit with a weapon ofsome kind, but it turns it was a classic case of "collateral damage": she had run up to her mom when they started bombing near the house, while her mom was cooking. Then a bomb exploded nearby and the burning oil in her mother's pan spilled all over this young girl's face. While we stood there, she just cried and called for her mom. We all stood watching, feeling helpless and guilty.

We left the hospital and went to Al-Zeytoun, a farming community on the southern outskirts of Gaza City. It was one of the hardest hit areas at the beginning of the ground invasion. The neighborhood was almost entirely inhabited by members of the extended Sammouni family. The town was in the news a lot after soldiers evacuated home after home of Sammounis into one house, that they then shelled, killing dozens of people. We walked up the dirt road and saw the rubble. Only one or two buildings left standing; the rest were completely decimated. Scattered tents served as makeshift shelters. We split up into teams of two and began interviewing survivors. We found two women sitting silently in front of the rubble that used to be someone's home. One of the women, Zahwa, described the night where she saw her husband executed in front of her with his hands above his head (Zahwa Sammouni is pictured above sitting in front of a tent. Her house was destroyed the night the soldiers came throughthe neighborhood). She then huddled with her children in a back room of the house as soldiers shot through the two windows above them. She showed us the bullet holes in the wall of the house, the heap of rubble that used to be her house, and the wounds in her back from being grazed with bullets while she hunched over her children. Her 10-year-old son showed us the shrapnel wounds in his leg and proudly displayed the large piece of shrapnel that he single-handedly pulled out of his chest that night. His cousins then gave us a tour of one of the few houses left standing -- one that the soldiers had used as a base, after they rounded up all those in the neighborhood and demolished all the other houses. The house was a mess. All the family's possessions were thrown around the outside perimeter. Bags of feces from the soldiers were strewn around outside. The inside was ransacked. The soldiers had covered nearly every surface with graffiti: "death to the Arabs", "if it weren't for Arabs,the world would be a better place", "kill Arabs". I feverishly took notes and photographs of the stories of Zeytoun, knowing I did not want to stop and think about what had happened here.

Throughout the day, we felt distant bomb blasts. I still gave a little jump when I heard the tremors and I can't say they didn't make me nervous. But the Palestinians we were meeting with didn't bat an eyelid. They knew when they were in danger and they knew when it didn't matter. "Oh, they're just bombing the tunnels" or "that's all the way in the north" people would say. Cold comfort.

We met with paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society. They described how they were shot at, and sometimes hit, while trying to reach injured people. We met with human rights organizations who described the difficulties of trying to collect accurate information and trying to help everyone when there was such widespread devastation. We met with a psychiatrist in Gaza City who ran one of very few mental health centers there. He wondered how to treat a population of 1.5 million who were all suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. "Listen to the kids tell their stories" he told us. "They tell it like it happened to someone else". That's one of the symptoms of PTSD apparently. and we saw it again and again. Whether it was the little boy describing his father's execution in front of him, or kids showing us the shrapnel they pulled out of themselves and their dead relatives, or a little girl talking about how her house was destroyed -- none of them broke down, none of themcried, none of them seemed scared. There was complete detachment from the horror they were living and their identification with it. A scarred generation that will inherit this conflict.

I left Gaza by hitching a ride with a car full of BBC journalists. We headed in the Land Rover, with "TV" painted on the hood, down the coastal road that winds the length of Gaza. It was my first time seeing the Sea in Palestine, I remember thinking. what a strange feeling. To be in a country i knew so well, and yet be somewhere so completely unfamiliar. The privilege of having a chance to go there and the utter relief at being able to leave were competing in my head. The crossing back into Egypt was short and painless. But as soon as i saw the other side of Rafah again, i felt a deep ache of regret and guilt that didn't let up for weeks. Regret at having left before my work was done and guilt that I had wanted to get out of there.

Gaza was like nothing I'd ever seen. The reality of a very real bloodbath set in. I saw what this onslaught did to people -- real people. i looked into their eyes and heard their stories and saw their wounds. It made war realer than i ever wanted it to be. There still isn't yet a day that goes by that I don't think about what i saw and heard, and feel guilty about leaving, and sad that people are still living with such pain, fear, trauma and loss. I think the hardest part is knowing that as a world, we utterly failed the Palestinians of Gaza. We stood and watched them die and justified our own inaction. It is something that should bring a little shame to us all.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

The major Israeli arms manufacturer "Raphael" produced a promo tailored especially for one of its most significant arms buyers, India. As reported in the first item below recounting part of the international response to it, this clip is an extremely blunt, not to say bludgeoning, expression of Israel's racist, sexist orientalism. Reflecting the perceptions of Israeli defense officials, it portrays India (and by implication other major "third world" clients such as Turkey) as a feminized, sexualized, exoticized, undeveloped dependent on Israel's/Raphael's masculinized high-tech-protection.

Outrageous, blundering, ignorant and offensive as it is, the promo offers a lucid demonstration of the interdependent compound of racism and sexism embedded in Israel's militarization. As feminist scholars have been showing for years, militarization necessarily involves "othering"—of a fearful, (usually) racialized enemy on the one hand and a vulnerable, weak, feminized protégé on the other. The Raphael sales clip indeed depicts its "friends" as racialized, feminized and inferior "others". Their progress and security, the clip explains in so many jingle lyrics, lies in succumbing to the masculine, black leathered, superior protector and acquiring Raphael's arms systems.

The linkage of arms, so-called security and a complementing combination of racism and sexism is accordingly no coincidence. It is a systemic aspect of militarization.

Among other things, Jewish Israeli society (like numerous colonial powers before and since) commonly "others" and further "enemizes" Palestinian or Arab societies in terms of their repression of women, citing this as conclusive evidence of their backwardness, barbarism and cruelty and, conversely in comparison, of Israel's enlightened, advanced development.

However, the reality in militarized Israel is one of deep running gender discrimination. Requiring vulnerable weak women whose need for protection allegedly justifies the deployment of organized state violence, Israeli culture systematically and actively works to weaken women through a broad spectrum of strategies and practices. One of them is keeping women relatively poor. As reported in the second piece below, in Israel today "the average income of a working woman is 64 percent of the male average." And "mothers still earn much less than any other demographic in the workforce, despite the fact that they make up a greater part of the workforce than any other group."

The military in particular, an institution which of course wields enormous influence on society and culture in Israel, tends to "put women in their [inferior] place" through the structure of their posts and their military roles and through widespread, normalized practices of sexual harassment. A 2003 study by the military itself found that 80 percent of women conscripts were exposed to sexual harassment in the course of their service (http://www.aka.idf.il/yohalan/main/main.asp?catID=18283, Hebrew).

Commenting on a recent scandal around disclosures that Israel's top naval commander regularly visits strip-clubs, feminist media star Merav Michaeli, writes in the third piece below, "the IDF remains an institution in which women enjoy not even a semblance of equality … a clear majority of women serving in the army are in service positions. Such services are rendered to men in professional positions, and … we know that these include sexual services … the military lacks a clear ethics code emphasizing the significance of the sexual harassment issue, as well as an educational program for soldiers and commanders to change their views on sexual harassment."

Paradoxically, while reform efforts have achieved, and may continue to achieve, a limited degree of improvement, this very improvement meanwhile works to conceal the central, structural role of sexist-racist beliefs and practices in maintaining the world view vital to the consistently militarized agenda of the Jewish state.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel's armament development authority, has launched a promotional film that was dubbed "the most atrocious defense video of all time" by Wired, the popular technology magazine.

The Bollywood-esque video, aired last month for the Indian annual air show, features sari-clad women dancing between flower-draped missiles, as a man in a leather jacket promises them "security and protection" to the sound of a sitar-tinted version of the famous pop song Together Forever.

The video cost $15,000 to produce, and was directed by the independent director Avishai Kfir in Israel. The actors are Israelis of Georgian and Indian origin.

A Rafael spokesperson said that the video had been received with much acclaim in India.

"Rafael is constantly trying to demonstrate innovation and creativity not only in the field of defense technology," he said. "In every international fair we launch a film that corresponds with the local culture. In Brazil, for example, our clip revolved around soccer. Over the past few years, we have won first prize for design and production almost annually."

In July 1848, dozens of women and a few dozen men gathered for the world's first feminist conference in Seneca Falls, New York. For the first time in human history, a resolution was passed calling for women to be given social and democratic rights equal to those of men. Today, more than 150 years and one feminist revolution later, the position of women in society is inestimably better. But according to a study being published Sunday to coincide with International Women's Day - which is marked in 61 countries today - mothers still earn much less than any other demographic in the workforce, despite the fact that they make up a greater part of the workforce than any other group.

The study, conducted out by researchers from the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University, shows that matrimony has a clear detrimental effect on women's earning power and that raising children is the factor that most affects women's ability to close the financial gap between the sexes.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 2,661,000 women living in Israel at the start of 2008. Of them, some 951,000 had children under the age of 17. In 2008, 51.3 percent of women over the age of 15 were part of the workforces compared to 46.3 percent in 1998. That said, the average income of a working women is 64 percent of the male average. The average pre-tax income of men in 2007 was NIS 9,267 a month; women made, on average, just NIS 5,949. One of the key factors used to explain this difference is that women, on average, work fewer hours than men. The percentage of women who hold parttime jobs is three times higher than for men; 36.4 percent of women, compared to 12.4 percent of men.

"The study clearly shows that getting married harms women's earning power and increases the earning power of men," Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kadari, head of the Rackman Center, said. "Compared to married men, married women earn less and less as they get older, while single women's average salary gets closer to men's average as they get older. Mothers work less hours because of child-rearing and household chores. Motherhood, therefore, is the main factor that perpetuates the gap between men's and women's earning power."

According to Halperin-Kadari, "the State of Israel has one of the highest birth rates in the Western world, but the infrastructure for looking after children and the possibility of both parents playing a role in the workforce are extremely restricted. Because of the high birth rate here, mothers are more impacted by this than in other places."

CBS data shows that 34 percent of employees in the high-tech sector - around 88,300 people - are women. Women also make up 31.5 percent of executives in Israel, compared to 14.7 percent in 1988. Over half (56 percent) of students in institutions of higher education are women and 52.7 percent of Israeli doctoral students are women.

When the scandal over Israel Navy Commander Eliezer Marom's jaunts to a Tel Aviv strip club broke, he was quoted in Haaretz as having told Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi that he had "no more skeletons in the closet." Namely, that he had never abused or harassed women, neither in his military or his civilian life. Marom clearly understands the line on which the manifold ways of exploiting women and using them as objects of sexual amusement and control are located.

In his remarks, Marom made a distinction between places in which it is permissible to exploit women (strip clubs) and those in which it is prohibited (the army). Ashkenazi, who gave him only a verbal reprimand, bolstered this distinction, declaring before professional female soldiers in the standing army that Marom's behavior "does not contravene the law, and was done in his free time, in civilian clothes." Even those calling for Marom to be dismissed or quit claim merely that his actions "do not befit IDF values."

Is there really such a clear distinction? Do objectification and exploitation of women really violate IDF principles? Despite flowery rhetoric proclaiming the "women's revolution" in the Israeli military, the IDF remains an institution in which women enjoy not even a semblance of equality. Countless professional and combat positions remain completely closed to women (while at the same time men are hardly ever given service-type positions), and the army placement system separates and discriminates between the sexes from the outset, despite legal prohibitions.

The Segev Committee, appointed by former IDF human resources chief Elazar Stern, submitted wide-ranging recommendations two years ago for changing that situation. The committee seemed to offer a solution for all the problems military officials described as delaying progress toward gender equality. Its report, however, was shelved immediately upon submission, as the army was unwilling to "alter the balance between women's obligation to serve in the army and their [nonexistent] rights" during their service, according to one army official who was a committee member.

When Devorah Hasid resigned as adviser to the chief staff on women's affairs - the last position in the IDF set aside for someone who speaks by and for women, which the last chief of staff tried to reduce and Ashkenazi intends to cut - she left behind her a report which found that a clear majority of women serving in the army are in service positions. Such services are rendered to men in professional positions, and while the report does not spell them out, we know that these include sexual services.

Hasid's report concluded that the military lacks a clear ethics code emphasizing the significance of the sexual harassment issue, as well as an educational program for soldiers and commanders to change their views on sexual harassment.

As stripping is merely a gradation of prostitution, despite offering "only visual" services, female IDF soldiers fill the role of sexual object even if touching is ostensibly prohibited. (Research proves definitively that women engaged in all forms of prostitution, including nude dancing, are victims of extreme violence.)

The IDF drafts women partly in order so that the men will have have someone to spend time with, to welcome them when they return from training or battle.

I permit myself to guess that had Marom been caught in a gay club, the chief of staff's reaction would have been far more severe, even though that, too, is not illegal. But the masculine ethic, as the feminist and jurist Catharine MacKinnon writes, views whatever maintains men's power as good, and whatever undermines, restricts or challenges his absoluteness as bad. A visit to a strip club, therefore, does not justify dismissal. In fact, it is entirely in line with the values of the IDF. ________________________________________

When Palestinian activists or children are shot and killed, it is often "not news" to the Hebrew or English press which barely reports it, if at all. On Friday, however, Israeli forces critically injured a U.S. citizen, Tristan Anderson, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement.

As the Women's Coalition for Peace announced in its call to action below (following the report from the daily Haaretz), Israel's military recently loosed a collection of "particularly lethal anti-demonstration weapons against non-violent demonstrators". Anderson's severe injury was no mistake.

Our March 3rd posting on the topic (which you can access through the JPN blog address cited above)listed several Israeli agencies and officials whom you can contact with letters or calls of protest. Sometimes, these can and do make a difference. As Israel acquires an openly racist, right-wing, extremist government, your international voices of steady protest become all the more vital.

U.S. citizens critically hurt at West Bank protestBy The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

Palestinian sources said that an American citizen, in his thirties, had sustained critical wounds during an anti-separation fence protest in the West Bank on Friday, Army Radio reported.

Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif. area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt.

Protesters who were at the scene said that Anderson was standing by the side of the road when soldiers fired at him, and not near the hub of the clash. They added that there was no one in his vicinity that could have been perceived as a threat to the soldiers.

"He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition as life-threatening.

The protest took place in the West Bank town of Na'alin, where Palestinians and international backers frequently gather to demonstrate against the barrier. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep Palestinian attackers from infiltrating into Israel. But Palestinians view it as a thinly veiled land grab because it juts into the West Bank at multiple points.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson's office said the area where the protests take place is a closed military zone off-limits to demonstrations. It added that demonstrators hurled rocks at troops, who used riot gear to quell the unrest.

The IDF said further that the "protesters violated an injunction issued by a major general and were endangering security forces."

Ulrika Jenson, an International Solidarity Movement activist, said troops fired tear gas canisters into the crowd from a hill above.

"Tristan was hit and fell to the ground," Jenson was quoted as saying in an ISM statement. "He had a large hole in the front of his head, and his brain was visible."

A Palestinian protester was also wounded in the leg as a result of live IDF fire.

In 2003, another ISM activist, 23-year-old American Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to block it from demolishing a Palestinian home.

The driver said he didn't see her, and the Israeli military ruled her death an accident.

Meanwhile Friday, protesters gathered at another West Bank village to similarly protest Israel's separation fence. At this protest, held every Friday in Bil'in, some 100 demonstrators clashed with security personnel. Palestinian witnesses reported that five people had sustained injuries as security forces fired rubber-coated bullets at the crowd.

Protest the Shooting of Tristan AndersonDemonstration in Front of the Ministry of DefenseKaplan Street, Tel Aviv7 PM, Sunday

Tristan Anderson, an American citizen, was shot with an extended range tear gas canister at a demonstration against the Wall in Nilin on Friday. He was hit in the forehead and remains in critical condition. Like him, several other demonstrators have been seriously injured by the new extended-range canisters. In addition, the army has returned to using the Ruger .22 rifle to shoot at demonstrators. The recent injuries are a direct and predictable result of that policy. The ordinary excuses about an unfortunate accident and an investigation in progress will satisfy only those who are willing to lie to themselves. It is time to protest the shooting of Tristan and demand that the army stop using these particularly lethal anti-demonstration weapons against non-violent demonstrators.

Demonstrate in front of the ministry of defense on Kplan street in Tel Aviv tomorrow (Sunday) at 7 PM

CWP works year-round to end the occupation, stop the siege on Gaza, expose the economy of the occupation, resist militarism, empower and mobilize women, reach out to youth and build strong and ongoing partnership between Palestinian and Jewish women.** We need your help TODAY to continue our work tomorrow! **http://www.coalitionofwomen.org/donate

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has withdrawn his acceptance of chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman had signaled clearly that he would want to distinguish between the US's foreign policy interests and those of Israel, and that this would involve criticizing some of Israel's actions. In 2007 he criticized US policy, saying: "We abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel's efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoised Arab populations."

It is probable that Freeman was in fact forced to withdraw; his appointment was immediately and aggressively opposed by AIPAC, which initiated a viciously abusive smear campaign against him. Needless to say, this outcome does not bode well for the Obama administration's willingness to defend positions unfriendly to AIPAC. As Freeman says in the statement below: "I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government."

Retired Amb. Chas Freeman, who said today that he no longer accepts an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council, has just sent this message:

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was "asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse." I added that I wondered "whether there wasn't some sort of downside to this offer." I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returningto private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else's, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.